I know that’s how some places do it now, but why do specific taxes need to pay for specific stuff? Earmarking the funds just makes it harder to allocate them.
In some cases it makes some sense at face value, like having road or fuel taxes pay for road upkeep, but even then it results in having to scale the taxes to meet demand, in possibly untenable ways. Also, you don’t need to drive a car to benefit from roads and related infrastructure, so even the seemingly obvious connections aren’t necessarily fair.
I especially object to using local property taxes to pay for schools, because this just means affluent areas get lots of school funding (in addition to the donations they surely get), while schoold in poor areas get scraps. Which in turn makes it even harder for students to escape poverty.
I think because when a tax is getting implemented the people want to know exactly why they pay it and what it’s for.
Here we have school boards that manage a very large area of many schools. The taxes of many municipalities pool to fund many schools. These tax systems are old and probably very hard to change. I’m sure there are better ways to do things but the political might to change the system isn’t there.
Why? Knowing that my property taxes pay for one set of things and my income tax pays for something else does nothing for me. In the end, all that really matters is how much my net pay is, and whether the government is spending its income reasonably.
In the school example, my area also pools it, I believe statewide. The schools also receive federal money from my income tax. I don’t care, as long as the schools have the funding they need. Which they don’t.
I don’t get to choose what kind of taxes I pay or what they go to (except that dollar to the presidential campaign fund), so how do I really benefit from knowing which goes where? Just pool it all and make a budget! It’s like Americans are addicted to overcomplicating things.
You’re looking at it from the wrong side. Imagine a politician saying, “we’re starting a new tax, 20% of your income”. You ask why, what’s it for and he says “everything!” how keen are you for that?
All taxes were created one at a time and sold to people individually. Politicians said “we need money for x, we need to tax y to pay for it”. Run for office on a platform of eliminating all taxes with your omnibus tax reforms and we’ll see how it goes.
You can say what an increase in funding is meant to finance without earmarking the funds. Other countries do that just fine. In this example, you’d run on lowering property taxes, because campaign on the tax you’re increasing is never a good plan.
I get that there’ll always be some taxes collected at different levels, like some federal, some state level and some municipal, and that does to some extent direct how the funds can be used, but earmarking the funds beyond that just adds complexity and fucks up budgeting. It’s how you end up with stuff like every other thing on the budget borrowing from social security.
The real thing hindering these kinds of reform is that American politics are inherently resistant to change. With a two-party system in near equilibrium there will rarely be any opportunity to change big things, and in practice most big changes in the US happen at the judicial branch as a result. For example, WA doesn’t have income tax due to the WA supreme court declaring it unconstitutional, and changing the constitution is nearly impossible to get the votes for in the current political climate.
Dude, most other countries, bar the dictatorships, have more changes happening than the US. Most other countries don’t have two-party systems with filibusters, debt ceilings disconnected from the budget, and whatever else.
Any country implementing parliamentarism, especially those not implementing first past the post, will have a lot less stalemates, because there are multiple other parties to make horse trades with. Do you have experience with any other country’s system of governance?
I know that’s how some places do it now, but why do specific taxes need to pay for specific stuff? Earmarking the funds just makes it harder to allocate them.
In some cases it makes some sense at face value, like having road or fuel taxes pay for road upkeep, but even then it results in having to scale the taxes to meet demand, in possibly untenable ways. Also, you don’t need to drive a car to benefit from roads and related infrastructure, so even the seemingly obvious connections aren’t necessarily fair.
I especially object to using local property taxes to pay for schools, because this just means affluent areas get lots of school funding (in addition to the donations they surely get), while schoold in poor areas get scraps. Which in turn makes it even harder for students to escape poverty.
I think because when a tax is getting implemented the people want to know exactly why they pay it and what it’s for.
Here we have school boards that manage a very large area of many schools. The taxes of many municipalities pool to fund many schools. These tax systems are old and probably very hard to change. I’m sure there are better ways to do things but the political might to change the system isn’t there.
Why? Knowing that my property taxes pay for one set of things and my income tax pays for something else does nothing for me. In the end, all that really matters is how much my net pay is, and whether the government is spending its income reasonably.
In the school example, my area also pools it, I believe statewide. The schools also receive federal money from my income tax. I don’t care, as long as the schools have the funding they need. Which they don’t.
I don’t get to choose what kind of taxes I pay or what they go to (except that dollar to the presidential campaign fund), so how do I really benefit from knowing which goes where? Just pool it all and make a budget! It’s like Americans are addicted to overcomplicating things.
You’re looking at it from the wrong side. Imagine a politician saying, “we’re starting a new tax, 20% of your income”. You ask why, what’s it for and he says “everything!” how keen are you for that?
All taxes were created one at a time and sold to people individually. Politicians said “we need money for x, we need to tax y to pay for it”. Run for office on a platform of eliminating all taxes with your omnibus tax reforms and we’ll see how it goes.
You can say what an increase in funding is meant to finance without earmarking the funds. Other countries do that just fine. In this example, you’d run on lowering property taxes, because campaign on the tax you’re increasing is never a good plan.
I get that there’ll always be some taxes collected at different levels, like some federal, some state level and some municipal, and that does to some extent direct how the funds can be used, but earmarking the funds beyond that just adds complexity and fucks up budgeting. It’s how you end up with stuff like every other thing on the budget borrowing from social security.
The real thing hindering these kinds of reform is that American politics are inherently resistant to change. With a two-party system in near equilibrium there will rarely be any opportunity to change big things, and in practice most big changes in the US happen at the judicial branch as a result. For example, WA doesn’t have income tax due to the WA supreme court declaring it unconstitutional, and changing the constitution is nearly impossible to get the votes for in the current political climate.
Dude, politics is a system that society has created to prevent change. When you get that, the western system of governance makes more sense.
Dude, most other countries, bar the dictatorships, have more changes happening than the US. Most other countries don’t have two-party systems with filibusters, debt ceilings disconnected from the budget, and whatever else.
Any country implementing parliamentarism, especially those not implementing first past the post, will have a lot less stalemates, because there are multiple other parties to make horse trades with. Do you have experience with any other country’s system of governance?